Acer has been having a difficult time in the computer market over the last several quarters, and has posted consecutive annual losses. Acer also announced during its latest quarterly report that it had taken $120 million write-off due to the declining value of Gateway, Packard Bell, and eMachines-branded computers.

Despite these troubles, the company is touting strong sales of its Chromebooks that use Google’s Chrome OS, while still talking negatively about Windows 8.

Acer says that notebooks running Chrome OS account for 5 to 10% of its U.S. shipments since the machines were released here in November. Acer President Jim Wong said that he expects the ratio of Chrome sales to be sustainable in the long term. He also said that the company is considering offering additional Chrome OS models in other developed markets.

Acer C7 Chromebook

Acer and many other computer makers are looking for alternatives to the Windows operating system because consumers continue to stick with older versions of the operating system rather than upgrade to the latest version.

“Windows 8 itself is still not successful,” said Wong. “The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch, that’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not.”

Wong criticized Windows 8 earlier this month alleging that Microsoft was getting marketing for its new operating system wrong.

The majority of people do not like like Windows 8. It's not just me, it's many people.

Each and every person gets to make their own decisions. I made mine, you made yours. As reality has it, most customers just don't want Windows 8.

Before the launch of Windows 8 you had people like me making the prediction that Windows 8 would flop because you had a corporation forcing change on customers rather than customers demanding change. Right from the beginning I told you what was going to happen. I said it's going to be another Vista or ME. But the clueless Windows 8 fans said it was going to be a runaway success and that I just am afraid of change, blah blah blah. Microsoft said that Windows 8 was going to drive PC sales due to its popularity.

Now that reality is upon us we see that Windows 8 has flopped. The adoption rate is even slower than Vista. I hear fans of Windows 8 saying that people "should have" liked it and demanding that they give reasons why they don't like it. Reality doesn't work that way. You can't force people to adopt your opinion.

Just because people don't plan on upgrading or encouraging others to do so doesn't mean they don't like win8. If I pass on upgrading my phone or computer or TV or whatever, it doesn't mean I dislike all the newer stuff.

Did you really read that article and come to that conclusion? Seriously?

First of all, that article is almost a year old, long before Windows 8 came out.

Second of all, the people who like Windows 8 say that it's the people who have never tried it who give it bad press. They said if you gave it a chance you'd like it. This article says half of the people who did try it would not recommend it.

LOL you claim "It is most definitely NOT selling fine", and then provide a link with ZERO sales figures. It's no wonder why, because the fact of 60 million license sales proves you wrong.

Webstats vary grossly from one company's stats to another. 1.72%? Well, look at the Steam survey after two months:http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurveyWin 8 is at 6.93% as of Dec 2012. For Oct 2012, it was only 0.22%, so it's true that pre-release adoption was quite low, but usage picked up quickly after that.

This is despite Valve's anti-Win8 talk and Steam having a disproportionate number of hardcore users, who are the most vocal Win8 haters.

Comparison with Win7 is apples and oranges. Win7 followed a hated OS, and happened during a time of PC sales growth. Win8 followed a beloved OS that doesn't give people reason to upgrade. There is nothing MS could have done to repeat Win7 sales.

As for the NPD stat, guess what: ALL notebooks/desktops have declining sales this year, regardless of OS. Apple lost 20% of sales year over year. Windows PC sales declined far less than that.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer